Football’s Taboo TV Topic
The topics of head injuries and overall player safety have begun to be addressed during on-air discussions between former players, coaches and other analysts. (Tom Gannam/AP)
Visiting the Manhattan apartment of Mike Weisman, it’s impossible to miss the parade of Emmy Awards from a long and distinguished career in sports broadcasting. The nearly two-dozen statuettes stand guard on a shelf in a spacious living room, lording over the place like Swiss guards protecting a European court.
Weisman joined NBC Sports in 1972 and was appointed executive producer of the sports division 10 years later, a position he held until 1989. After various other television jobs, he returned to NBC Sports for two years in 2007 to serve as the executive in charge of production for the "Football Night in America" studio show. How did he and his colleagues navigate between being a good television partner and reporting on the seamier side of professional sports? “There’s always a very thin line we walked between offending our partners, hurting the product in any way, and yet recognizing we had responsibility to tell the news or the truth as best we knew it,” says Weisman.
Can football change? Will the sport become safer? How are concussions impacting the game’s future?
Introducing an in-depth series where we tackle those questions, starting at high schools and continuing into college and the NFL. Read the entire series.
It is the same line networks broadcasting the NFL today must traverse when it comes to reporting on concussions and head injuries. The good news is NFL broadcasters are much more willing to discuss and report on the issue now than they were during Weisman’s salad days. “We talked about the Jack Tatums, the Steel Curtains, how players could knock you unconscious and ring your bell, and we reported it with admiration,” Weisman says. “It was like the
. We glorified it, and we glorified it because we were also unaware of the dangers of concussions.”
All football-airing networks today report on player safety, especially when injuries result in a player missing games, or a helmet-to-helmet hit becomes a point of controversy among fans. What does not exist, however, is substantive dialogue on concussions or brain trauma during game coverage, the sacrosanct product for the league. Broadcasters will tell you that the three-hour window makes it difficult to address the topic with any kind of depth.
“I know three hours for a broadcast seems like a long time, but I really think the topic is so deep that it would take 10 minutes of a broadcast while a football game is going on to try and give that topic any depth whatsoever,” says NBC Sunday Night Football analyst Cris Collinsworth. “It is something I really care about. I have kids who play the game, and I’ve done a lot of studying and discussing the issue with a lot of people. But I think in my case, the [Showtime] ‘Inside The NFL‘ show is a better format for discussion.”
But what is the impact of not discussing the issue when the most eyeballs are on the product? Steve Fainaru, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ESPN investigative reporter who along with his brother and fellow ESPN investigative reporter, Mark Fainaru-Wada, co-authored "League Of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth," counters that there is something of a whitewashing going on.
“I watch the NFL every week, and it's pretty rare that it comes up, except to point out what a great job the NFL is doing to make the game safer,” says Fainaru. “It's more like an infomercial. I'm not sure this is always the forum for it, but sometimes it feels like the elephant in the room. It's obviously an issue—the whole country is talking about it, the president of the United States has even addressed it, and yet for the many hours of coverage, you wouldn't get that this is a big deal or even very important. This is true of ESPN, too, of course. There hasn't exactly been a clamor from people on the NFL shows to address the issues raised in League of Denial. ”
Steve Fainaru's reporting played a central role in the recent 'League Of Denial' documentary. (Frederick Brown/Getty Images)
The Fainarus—and their reporting on this topic—were a major part of this month’s PBS Frontline documentary also titled "League of Denial.” (Fainaru said the book and the documentary grew out of a concussion piece on former Vikings linebacker Fred McNeill that Fainaru-Wada did for ESPN’s "Outside the Lines.") What made the documentary such a topic of concern for NFL officials was it offered a clear and cogent narrative on concussions and brain trauma for the average NFL fan. It also carried the imprimatur of PBS Frontline, television’s journalism’s 800-pound gorilla. In August, The New York Times reported the league put pressure on ESPN to end a 15-month collaboration with Frontline that had already produced nine separate reports on the concussion crisis. The NFL denied the charge.
“OTL and the ESPN investigative unit have been attacking the issue more aggressively than any other media entity in the country—that was one of the reasons ESPN got involved in the Frontline partnership in the first place,” says Fainaru. “It's somewhat ironic, given what happened. But the commitment is still huge. There's no way anyone in television is committing more resources to the concussion issue right now. Not really trying to defend the network for pulling out of the Frontline partnership, just pointing out the ironies."
While networks that air the NFL are eager to trumpet their reporting successes and editorial independence, most only go so far in their reporting on what is clearly a third rail topic for the league. That is what made ESPN’s collaboration with Frontline unique, and viewers should put ESPN in a separate category given they are far and away the on-air reporting leader on concussions among the football-airing networks, mostly thanks to the staff at Outside The Lines.
“All the governing leagues and bodies—MLB, NBA, the Olympics, the NCAA, the NFL—they are all looking to promote their product, and the networks are partners, willing or unwilling,” Weisman said. “They have to put the best face on it—glorify the athletes and make them look good. The difference is we are much more cognizant of the NFL influence because they are better at what they do than the other bodies. We tend to look at the NFL as being on the grassy knoll or domineering, but it is because they are so organized. They see everything. They are really aware of their product and the public perception of their product.”
“I can only speak for ESPN, because that's where I work,” Fainaru says. “It's a really complicated issue. I mean, ESPN has a $15 billion investment in the league. I think the more I get into this, the more I appreciate the delicate balancing act that some people at the network are having to execute. But in the end the work speaks for itself. It's hard to see how anyone could watch or read 'League of Denial' and not conclude that this was in many ways a product of ESPN, in the same way that [Monday Night Football] is a product of ESPN. The tension is real, though, and I think that leads to maybe not reticence but a lot of internal deliberation that probably doesn't exist in other places.”
Interviews with broadcasters and executives last week produced unanimity on the question of whether the NFL had ever directly asked them not to report or discuss the issue of brain trauma or concussions on the air. “Absolutely not, and if the NFL came to me and asked me to back off in some way on an issue like that, I would run straight to the newspapers and tell the world,” Collinsworth says. “That is not what they are supposed to do, and what I am supposed to do is tell the truth as I see it and not care what the consequences are. NBC has been fantastic over the years at backing me at that.” (Fox Sports declined questions from the MMQB asking to self-evaluate its reporting and discussion on brain trauma and concussions).
CBS Sports executive producer Harold Bryant said NFL executives have never asked him or his colleagues to pull back on the topic. He cited a feature on player safety CBS did as part of last year’s Super Bowl pregame show, the sport’s biggest audience of the year. “They let us do what we feel is proper journalism,” Bryant said. “They have never put restrictions on us.”
On this note, longtime NFL producer and reporter Andrea Kremer is part of a broadcast unit for the league-owned NFL Network charged with reporting on player safety. She said she has never been asked by the network or the league to lessen existing reporting on player safety.
“When Mark Quenzel [senior vice president of production and programming for NFL Network] initially talked with me about this job, he told me he'd have my back if my reporting made the league a bit queasy, as long as my stories were fully balanced, fair and represented all viewpoints,” said Kremer, who has covered the NFL for ESPN, NBC and HBO Sports. “I was at the league office recently shooting a story on 'How a Hit Becomes a Fine' and happened to have discussed with a high-ranking league official current events that could be construed as not fully positive for the league and he reiterated: Just cover all sides. That's the best I can ask for, I think.”
Kremer said one positive result of her reporting and others is the trickle-down effect of concussion awareness, especially at the lowest and youngest levels of the game. “But I think the audience is developing concussion fatigue,” she says. “And I see no evidence that the reporting on concussions and traumatic brain injuries [TBI] has had any effect on the popularity of the NFL, whether in stadium or on television.”
That is true. While Frontline’s documentary drew a big audience—2.5 million viewers—in relation to its usual viewership, it was still 26 million viewers fewer than the NFL’s most-watched game (Packers-Niners on Sept. 8) this season.
I think that the audience is developing concussion fatigue. And I see no evidence that the reporting on concussions has had any effect on the popularity of the NFL. —Andrea Kremer
So what happens next? Any serious on-air reporting heading forward will have to originate from networks that see such reporting in the public interest and are willing to occasionally butt heads with the league on it. ESPN, ironically given its breakup with Frontline, remains the best bet for viewers because it’s the lone place in sports television that employs an entire department of investigative reporters. How would Fainaru improve the reporting on concussions by the NFL’s television partners?
“I think one could logically conclude the networks, on some level, are trying to protect the league's interests, and of course their own,” Fainaru said. “But to me they're not mutually exclusive. One thing that's really become clear to me is that people who love football are really looking for good information to help them sort out what this means—especially as it relates to their own lives. The networks—and the NFL—could do a major public service by addressing the issue head on (sorry) and featuring people on different sides of the issue. For example, Bob Cantu, who advises the NFL, wants us to abolish tackle football before high school. Kevin Guskiewicz, who also advises the league, disagrees. Why not let them air it out before or during the Sunday night game? Would that be less valuable or interesting than, say, another feature on Colin Kaepernick's turtle?”
They Know the Feeling
Many of the faces you see and voices you hear on NFL Sunday broadcasts are high-profile former players who suffered concussions during their careers. Troy Aikman and Steve Young both left the game in part because of head hits. Terry Bradshaw was knocked out of Super Bowl X by a helmet-to-helmet blow, one of what he called a career worth of concussions. Rodney Harrison estimates he suffered at least 20 concussions as a player. Indeed, given what we know now, it's unlikely that any former player now working in broadcasting did not experience some degree of head trauma during his playing career. We asked a few ex-players now in the booth for their perspective on the issue, and whether having suffered concussions as a player affects their approach to the job and their performance behind the mike.
Merrill Hoge played seven seasons for the Steelers, but it was a sequence of concussions in 1994 with Chicago that forced him to retire. (Andy Hayt/SI)
Merril Hoge, ESPN NFL analyst: "Different areas of the brain are traumatized. Just because I have head trauma or you have head trauma does not mean the same area of the brain was traumatized. That being said, in my case, when I went into cardiac arrest the trauma that triggered that, the area of the brain that was most affected, in my case was the reading aspect of things. I had to learn how to read again, and I have never recovered from that perspective. I now always struggle reading, and when I read, I don't comprehend, nor I am able to keep a long enough focus to understand what I am reading. I don't read TelePrompTers. So I study tape and games, and that side of my brain was not as traumatized as the other side. That's why I spend so much time watching tape because that's how I learn, that's how I am cognitively able to do what I do. If I had to read in order to do this, I would have lasted one show."
NFL Network analyst Heath Evans: “I had three documented concussions in my 10 years playing in the NFL. Concussion cause-and-effect or trauma is not and never will be an exact science. How a concussion might affect someone who has a predisposed condition versus how it affects some without that issue is totally different. I've always had a sharp but forgetful mind, but fortunately nothing that prohibits my day-to-day work for NFL Network. I was diagnosed as ADD/ADHD at the age of 16, and I believe most of my memory issues stem from those learning disabilities instead of concussions that took place years after.”
NFL Network analyst Darren Sharper: “Well, for me it was a natural transition. I had done broadcasting in the past while I was playing football so I knew the structure of being in studio and how to present my thoughts. Having suffered concussions hasn't affected my ability to put thoughts together succinctly and smoothly on air. Communication is something we do every day. For my work on NFL Network, it is all about preparation and delivery.”
NFL Network analyst Kurt Warner: “As I would assume with many retired players, I often wonder if the hits I took throughout my career will one day have a negative effect on my post-football career and life. But I can honestly say that at this point in my life I am suffering no adverse affects either mentally or physically. I believe mentally I am as sharp as I have ever been and I am continually challenging myself with new endeavors in retirement. As an analyst on NFL Network, I challenge myself weekly in watching film, formulating ideas and concepts, memorizing material, etc... and believe I am able to comprehend and retain as much information and can push myself as far now as I did when I was a player. I physically play basketball three times a week and feel great that way. I continually believe the best way to stay healthy and sharp, both physically and mentally, is to push yourself in both areas, always striving to be better and get stronger. This has been my approach, and will continue to be my approach in retirement and I believe without question it is paying off.”
The View from Young Journalists
The MMQB recently empaneled a group of college students—newspaper editors, writers and television majors—to discuss how they consume the NFL and to share their thoughts on broadcasting. For The MMQB's special series on head trauma in football, we brought some of the panel back this week for a question:
The panel: Ryan Krasnoo, senior, University of Michigan; Beth Maiman, junior, University of Oregon; Brooke Pryor, senior, University of North Carolina; Alysha Tsuji, junior, Pepperdine University; Aron Yohannes, junior, University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
In your opinion, how do the networks airing the NFL cover concussions and head trauma?
Krasnoo: Over the last year or so, as more information has been made public, the networks airing the NFL have done more to cover concussions and head trauma, but still not enough. They'll mention that a player received a concussion but leave much to be desired in terms of the longer, more devastating effects of brain damage. While not condoning this process, it does make sense to some degree. Few avid football fans would like to see the attention focused off the game itself and shifted to player injuries, and the networks appear to tailor their approach accordingly.
Maiman: The networks are not glorifying brutal hits as much as they did in the past. Without a doubt it's something that still occurs, but I personally have noticed a difference in the coverage of the vicious hits. It kind of makes one wonder if there is more than just the recent studies on concussions that is pushing for fewer replays? Perhaps the networks and the league have talked? Football will always have an entertainment factor, and the hard hits will always be an element of the game. However, I believe that has somewhat taken a back seat. Yes, the networks still report on big hits because of the "newsworthy" component, but they are also more aware that the hits that might get fans to stay on the channel a little longer could also be a life-changing moment for an athlete.
Pryor: I'd like to know more about the long-term effects of a concussion. At least in the games I've seen, concussions get glossed over once the player has left the field. I understand the need to continue on with game coverage, but a refresher of the lasting effects, as well as timelines for treating concussions, would be helpful. It would also be beneficial to air the special on concussions on ESPN or ABC rather than PBS because it could attract larger audiences and educate more people.
Tsuji: CBS, NBC, FOX and ESPN all cover news concerning football-related concussions and head trauma, but from what I've seen the angles for those types of stories across the networks feel extremely similar. For example, the sad Junior Seau suicide story broke out, and they covered the violent death, the possible reasons for it and lightly touched on what should be done to prevent the situation from happening again. However, topics that could be hit harder are about realistic immediate solutions, and perhaps about treatment options. By now, with "League of Denial" out and everyone generally more aware, the coverage has expanded. Still, when head trauma hits occur in the NFL games or even when hashing over NFL highlights, I think the networks could not only do more, but be creative with the coverage, as they do with other topics. I wouldn't want the serious issues surrounding concussions and head trauma to become mundane. In the pros, it needs to continue to be looked over and researched because it does trickle down. These problems impact the youth as well. It should not be taken lightly.
Yohannes:
